1.21 blog

Yesterday Pastor Craig preached a sermon from Revelation 5, which depicts a scene of the worship in heaven (I’ll have more to say about this in a subsequent post). The burden of the sermon was that Jesus Christ, the Conquering Lion, the Lamb who was Slain, is worthy of all worship: in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.

Jesus is worthy of our worship. We’ll be worshiping him throughout eternity. It behooves us, then, to learn how to worship well. There are several features of worship that I noticed in the text.

1. Worship is Affective. In verse 4, when no one can open the scroll, John weeps loudly. This shows us that worship is holistic, it includes our affections and our emotions. Now, I have a pretty deep distrust of the way some churches basically manipulate and manufacture emotion, or the ways that Christians sometimes associate worship exclusively with emotion (such that they’ve not “really worshiped” unless they reach a certain level of fervor).  But still, it’s inescapable, that worship involves our affections.
2. Worship is concerned with God’s purposes. The main action of this scene is the opening of the scroll that contains God’s purposes for history and the church. John weeps because it seems God’s purposes will be thwarted. The heavenly host worships because the Lamb will be able to open the scroll. Therefore, in worship, our focus should be primarily Godward, and on his purposes, rather than inward/selfward, and with a view to our own purposes (e.g., what we’ll get out of it).
3. Worship is embodied. In verse 8, we see the living creatures and the elders prostrate themselves before the Lamb, and burning incense. They realize that we aren’t just free floating souls. And while worship is primarily a matter of the heart, that does not mean that what we do with our body is inconsequential. God created humanity with bodies, and he’s not changed his mind. We’ll have bodies throughout eternity. Physical stuff (even smells and bells) matters. That’s part of why our corporate worship is sacramental, because we want sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell to be involved in the worship of God. So does God.
4. Worship is orderly. This is not a chaotic scene. Everyone has their appropriate parts and responses, and they say them at the right times. In fact, in Chapter Four, we read that they are frequently repeating the same lines (from memory? by rote? from a book? we don’t know). Some traditions place a high value on spontaneity and lack of planning. There are times when that is appropriate. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in this scene. The worshipers here are no less “led by the Spirit” than our more charismatic brothers and sisters, but they seem to be using (dare I say it?), a fairly liturgical/ritualized form of worship. At its best worship is both orderly/liturgical and free flowing/non-restrictive.
5. Worship is focused on the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. The whole scene centers about the Lamb who was slain, and how he purchased a people for God by his blood. I’ve noticed that a good bit of contemporary worship music (and many “traditional” songs) sings truth (“I am a friend of God”), but fails to give any sort of context or basis for it (“because Jesus Christ died for me”). In my humble (but accurate) opinion, that sort of approach eviscerates worship of its true meaning and purpose. Our worship should never assume the gospel. It should proclaim it, revel in it, and marinate in it. Only Jesus is worthy of our worshipful response. And only in the cross do we understand why that is the case.

Well, I’ve probably alienated enough people for one post. In our next post, we’ll take a look at worship and the “communion of saints.”

Posted by: Gene Schlesinger